


Lunch at Mambo's

by thatdragonchic



Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Eventually Mac will come in too, Explicit Language, Gen, Historical AU, Jack Dalton Centric early on, violent au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-04
Updated: 2019-02-09
Packaged: 2019-10-22 01:48:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17653703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatdragonchic/pseuds/thatdragonchic
Summary: Jack Dalton's just a kid, he came from the war looking for a job at 25, he gets tangled up in the wrong kind of business





	1. Mambo's Restaurant

**Author's Note:**

> Shout out to Rey for helping me create this fabulously stupid au  
> I know chapter 1 isn't stellar but, this is probably going to be a very gorey and dark au  
> first few chapters are going to be mostly surrounding jack and him growing up in this business

\- 1952, Brooklyn Heat is a son of a bitch - 

 

Young and 25, he stands in the restaurant in Brooklyn, staring down the man who owned it. There was no air condition, just thick, roaring fans that sounded a lot like military drones, he doesn’t like this very much. He’s starting to squirm. 

“The fuck you just ask me?”

“You got any jobs?”

“Do you know who I am?”

“No.”

The big man with the italian accent turns to the woman next to him, she’s staring him down like a bull ready to charge out of his pen. “What you need a job for?” she asks in a heavy Brooklyn accent. 

“Money, what do y’all think?”

“Why you wanna work here? You a cop or somethin?”

“What? No. I just want a job. It ain’t that complicated,” Jack tells them, he was nearing his wits end. Why was it so hard.

“You work hard?” the man asks. 

“Yeah.”

“From the army, cowboy?”

“Yeah, I couldn’t take Texas no more, sick of my friends apartment in Queens. Need money for my own, need a job to make money.”

“Fuck, whatever, Mina, give him an apron, show him how to make the meatballs.”

“Really?”

“Sure,” he says, and Jack watches Mina turn to leave and the man watches him. “The fuck you waiting for? You want to work or not?”

“Now?”

“You got better shit to do?”

“No sir. Not at all.”

“Then follow Mina, and go learn how to make the meatballs.”

“Absolutely,” he says, practically hopping on his toes, like he’s the star quarterback fresh outta St Regis boarding school. He follows Mina, as he learned her to be, into the kitchen. She turns the water on, sweltering hot. 

“Wash your hands. Use the soap.”

He does as he’s told, and after she takes a towell and nearly skins his hands from how hard she rubs them down to dry them. She hands him latex gloves, and then grabs the meat from the shit fridge, the room sweltering, bubbling with heat, but the firm woman hardly broke a sweat.

“You know anything about the bible?”

“S’cuse me ma’am?”

“The bible. Hail Mary and all that stuff.”

“Sure.”

“We say the Hail Mary over the meat.”

“Why?”

“So it don’t kill nobody, what’d you think?”

He almost wanted to laugh but he could see it in her eyes she wasn’t serious. “D-did you want me to say it?”

She sighs and clasps her hands. “Hail Mary, full of grace, the lord is with thee…” 

Jack joins her, this becomes a daily ritual. 

Jack is young, and so Jack can roll the meatballs, because he’s young and he’s got good wrists. So he does, he comes in everyday at 10 Am and stays there past 11 to roll the meatballs then clean the kitchen and wash the dishes.

“Think my wrists are going out,” he says 3 months later, on his break. Mina gives him a coffee. 

“On the house today,” she says. “Mambo thinks you work hard for a kid, maybe we’ll let you roast the vegetables for a while.”

Jack perks up, and Mambo walks in with some big looking men, important looking men. They were always wearing suits and sharp. Dressed up, and talking low. Jack notes they had guns, he squares his shoulder and Mina pats his shoulder. 

“Go to the back, or you never come back. Heard?”

“Heard,” he agrees, taking the mug she gave him and going to the back. 

“Hey kid!” Mambo calls before he walks through the door. “Where you goin? Crew just got here, come meet my friends. Joey, Lenny, this is the kid I told you about- hard workin vet, ain’t one of those bombs workin in the pharmaceuticals making milkshakes at the counter, he’s a real hard workin’ boy- mopped the floor spotless last night, and it was 11.30.” 

“He’s handsome too,” Joey said. “Come here, what’ya shy or something? Get in the light- his hair is black as night. Where’d you say he was from? Sicily?”

“Texas,” Jack speaks up. “Family don’t care none for labels.”

“Labels? That what you cowboys call them? You take pride in your family, don’t know where you from? You an italian like us now.”

Mambo laughs, Jack coming forward to the group, leaving his mug on the counter. “He’s a big talker this one, most days you can’t get him to stop runnin’ that trap of his on whatever garbage he comes up with.”

“Well come on fella, start talkin,” Lenny says.

“What’s your name?” Joey asks.

“Jack, Jack Dalton.”

“Jack!” Mina calls. “I told ya to get your  _ ass _ -!”

“Mina!” Joey calls. “Listen to that voice, voice of an angel!”

Mina stops by the counter and Mambo waves her off. “Let the kid interact, he don’t get to see nobody.”

“He don’t gotta see anybody, ‘specially these two sleazeballs. Get back here, Cowboy.”

Jack nods sheepishly, and the men try to chide her on, but Mina resists. “Now I don’t want you talkin to men like that,” she says, pulling her long black hair into a bun. “You hear me? Those men are trouble, capital T, and you ain’t out here lookin for trouble, are ya?”

“No ma’am.”

“Good, then don’t go pal’in up with Mambo’s friends. You’re a kid, you gotta go back to school, get your degree.”

“Yes Ma’am.”

“Go sit outside on the tarmac with the chairs, I’ll get you somethin’ to eat.”

“You don’t have to-”

“Shut up and sit outside.”

Jack obeys, and he goes to sit in the area Mina had set up outside behind the restaurant for them. He sits on the metal chair under the umbrella, it was hotter outside than in if you asked him, August was hotter than June, and it felt like the heat would never end. Reminded him a lot of being in the thick of the war, in all those clothes, and the gunfire, and the heat swelling up from the ground. He’s staring into the wall, forming holes with his memories, lost friends and spilt guts, and he doesn’t even notice Mina come out.

“Now what you thinkin so hard for?”

He jumps a bit and she gets a sympathetic look. “Nothin’... just the heat reminds me of- well it don’t matter.”

“You’re a real beat up kid, huh?”

“Yeah… I guess so.”

“Come on, eat your sandwich before it gets cold. Go deal with Mambo’s friends.”

“They bad people?”

She gets a kind of look on her face.

“Nobodies a bad person, kid, until you know the depth of their sin. Heard?”

“Heard.”

“Eat your lunch, I’m going inside.”

“Sure.”

Young Jack Dalton doesn’t have a single clue of what he’s gotten himself into. 


	2. Diane, Mina, Diane.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After a fight breaks downstairs, Jack goes out drinking.  
> It'd be easy to fall in love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for all the support last chapter! I'm having a lot of fun writing this, I hope you enjoy the chapter!   
> Also thank you to Rey for all the help plotting this and listening to me rant about it !

“Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death, Amen,” Jack finishes, before he starts on rolling the meatballs. He finishes them all before 12, which is a new record, Mambo walking in, with his swagger and his gun. 

“Dalton, you finish early today? Come on, put the meat in the fridge, let you work the counter.”

“Where’s Mina?”

“She’s upstairs in bed, got a headache.”

It was just another day. 

 

“Hail Mary, full of grace, the lord is with thee-” 

The door to the restaurant shatters. Seemingly sudden and very loud. Jack looks up, squares his shoulders and swallows his fear. Mina comes to the back and hands him a key. “Go upstairs.”

“Mina-”

“I can care for myself. Go upstairs, Jack. Apartment 104.” 

Jack wants to defend himself, but Mina has a determined, icy glare, the one a mother gives a misbehaved child, and Jack nods, going upstairs. He didn’t know what was going on, or if Mina would be okay. His heart is racing, he and the restaurant is right beneath him. He can hear a lot of yelling, and he can hear what sounds like the clicks of guns. His gut twists, and although the guns never go off, there’s a lot of yelling. A lot of disagreement. Jack can’t quite tell what they’re saying.

There was a feeling in the pit of his stomach. It was an awful, dark feeling, the pit that’s fallen in his stomach, tying up into knots. 

_ Where’s the boy, Mambo? _

_ You leave the fucking kid out of it, you son of a bitch. Put the money down for the glass and go. _

One person yells. Another. A protest. A threat to Jack. A loud bang. A scream. Jack shuts his eyes, shaking, he can see it. See all the blood of his friends on his hands, and the screaming, the bemoaned groaning, the soldiers who were supposed to make it and didn’t. He slumps against the door, covering his ears, the screaming has long died down but he can still  _ hear  _ it, the war that rages in his mind, and he sobs. He can’t feel the weight of reality, nothing was real anymore.  _ Jack! Jack you have to go!  _ But it didn’t matter that Jack stayed, because as long as he stayed, Worthy suffered, crying for him to go, to just leave him. To go find help somewhere else, but Jack keep pressure on the gushing wound. The blood wouldn’t stop. The blood never stopped. Slowly, Worthy’s heart did, though, and Jack was left with his lifeless body in his arms. 

“Jack! Jack look at me!” He hears. “Jack! Come on cowboy, please?” Small hands shake him, and he curls into the body trying to get to him, head laying on a frail chest and sobbing. He recognizes slowly the voice belongs to Mina, but he can really only hear Delilah yelling as she realized her husband was dead, falling into his arms and asking  _ why.  _

 

Hours. It takes hours to break out of it. He can see Mina’s been crying, she’s petting his hair emptily. “Gave me quite a scare.” 

“I don’t handle gunshots well.”

She nods. 

“What happened?”

“Complicated.”

“Oh.” He pauses. “I think I’m gonna go out,” he says quietly. “Grab a drink.”

She nods again. 

“You okay?” he whispers, and she rubs his arm slowly, taking a breath.

“Yeah… I’m okay. Go out Jack… and Jack? Be careful.”

“I will be…” 

She nods, kissing the top of his head. Jack helps her stand, and she wipes the tears from his eyes, smiling. “Freshen up first. Bathroom’s over there.” 

He nods, going to the bathroom, and he takes twenty minutes, just re-aligning himself. He takes a deep, shaky breath. He finally exits the bathroom.

Mambo is downstairs in the restaurant when he walks down, the man looking up. “You okay, kid? Sorry about earlier,” he says softly, extends a hand but Jack flinches a bit, before pressing a smile. 

“Yeah… I’m okay.” He’s lying through his teeth, he knows it. 

Mambo nods, and clears his throat. “You ever find an apartment?”

“No… still crashin’ at my friends.”

“How about you take an apartment here?”

“What?”

“Consider it paid off… Mina’s quite attached anyways and- well I’d just feel better if you stayed here kid.”

Jack nods slowly, and Mambo offers him a set of keys. 304, the room directly above theres. Jack nods. “Goin out.”

Mambo nods. 

\--

He sees her across the bar, a tray against her hip. Her wild hair thrashing around her shoulders, spilling over her back. Her smile was all the life in the world, as she tosses her head back at something a woman said. He can’t hear what they’re saying, but it’s like the whole world stops to look at her. He’s seated in her range, and she comes over to his table.

_ Diane  _ says her name tag, and her dark cheeks were blushing pink. “What can I get you?” she asks, a voice that was too sweet, too fake, and Jack smiles just a tad. 

“Bottle of whiskey will do.” 

“Whole bottle, king?” she asks, raising a brow. 

“Whole bottle, Queen,” he mocks, and she smiles, uneasy. 

“I’m not askin for trouble.”

“Neither am I,” he promises, giving a half hearted smile. “Just been a rough night.”

She softens a bit. “Whole bottle of whiskey don’t fix shit. Makes for a bitchin time but… isn’t much else. Still gonna hurt tomorrow.”

“Yeah, what do you suggest?”

“Don’t you go company to go talk to?” she asks.

“No company, just a bitch boy friend who let’s me crash his place. Not from here.”

“From the south. Know you white men type, think the city is the glory.”

“Just couldn’t stand bein’ in Texas anymore.”

She nods. “What happened in Texas?”

“Come home from war, gotta face all your folks when your friends died on the field. Ain’t that an awful thing? See your old pals from school, gotta see them get married, when… well you don’t care.”

She pities him and he knows it. “I clock out in twenty minutes. How about I get that bottle to share?”

“I’d really like that…” 

\--

“Were out all night,” Mambo notes the next morning. He looks tired, like maybe he’d been up waiting for him.

“Yeah,” Jack agrees just as tired, the hangover starting to hit him. “Met a girl, her names Diane.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, she was real nice… looked like the sun.”

He nods, and rubs Jacks shoulder. “Go sleep. Take care of the restaurant today, you had it rough, kid.”

“I can sleep once everything is set up.”

“Nah, don’t need you droolin in the damn meat. Then we’ll need two Ava Maria’s over it.” 

Jack laughs. “Alright, alright, I’ll go upstairs.” he pauses. “What happened to that guy yesterday?” 

Mambo looks at him a minute, his big, dark eyes unreadable. “Kid… some things I just can’t tell you.”

Jack nods. “I should shuttle back to queens.”

“Nonsense. Furnished the apartment for you, bout’a week ago. Go up there, go sleep.”

 

Lunch was a procession. It always was. He walks downstairs just past noon, and Mina is sitting at the table with Mrs. Walsh, and next to it is Mambo’s friends, smoking big cigars. Across the way was Darian Grey, and next to him was a man he hardly recognized. Probably visiting in town.

The air was clouded with smoke, and smelled like white wine. Pizza and Lasagne and Arrancini were spread on each plates, a lightly tossed salad was in the center of Mina’s table. She laughs, and Jack for a second considers that she’s beautiful. It wasn’t hard to believe that she must have been easy to fall in love with. The lines of age had barely touched her face, not when she seemed so happy. 

Mambo notices him, offers him a cigar and a seat. “Sleep good?” 

“Yeah, perfect,” Jack lies, giving a tight smile, and Mambo lights the cigar for him. 

“Get a plate, foods in the kitchen kid.”

“I’ll eat in a bit.” 

“Is that Jack?” Mina calls in her high pitched voice, her hair pulled back with a red bandana. She stands up, her blue dress swishing about her legs. “Come on, cowboy, you gotta eat. Then I need you to go to the market. Heard?”

“Heard,” he says and Mambo laughs.

“Drivin him crazy. Let him sit for a bit.”

“He slept all day, ain’t a slacker in this house, not even the kid. Heard, Dalton?”

“Yes ma’am. Won’t happen again.”

“Better not.” 

She leads him into the kitchen, walk fierce on her red heels, and she grabs a list, with ten things on it about. She hands him 30 bucks, and pats his shoulder, but then she holds up her hand, grabs a fresh ciabatta roll, and stuffs it with a slice of lasagne, wraps it in a paper towl and tin foil. “Eat on the way.”

“Tryin to get rid of me?” he teases, and she shakes her head.

“You ain’t got business with those men. You know that.”

“Yes ma’am.” 

“And don’t forget the cream this time.”

He nods, putting the money in his wallet, and she kisses his cheek. “Be safe.”

“I will be.”

 

“Now, do young men like this grab baking necessities often?” he hears, turning around in the grocery aisle, a familiar tussle of curls and electric eyes stare at him. 

He laughs. “Hi Diane,” he says softly. 

“You were good fun last night.”

“Was I?”

“Never heard a man tell such  _ stories _ .”

“I’m full of them, if you ever want to get dinner sometimes.”

“I should let you know, I’m with a man.”

“You are?”

“He ain’t no good, but he got a job and we got a girl.” 

Jack nods. “Doesn’t mean I don’t want to talk to you again. How old’s your girl?”

“She’s about 3 now… sweet little thing.”

Jack smiles. “That’s nice. By the way, dessert isn’t mine.”

“It’s not?”

“No, I’m not allowed to make the dessert. Mina says I’m not that skilled yet.”

She laughs. “I see. And Mina is who exactly?”

“She’s the wife of the owner of the restaurant I work for.”

“Where you work?”

“Not important if we ain’t talkin’ queen.”

“I never said that we can’t talk…”

“Still not tellin you,” he says, smiling and she smiles back. She takes a cake mix box of the shelf, and looks at the pillsbury packaging. “You gonna come by the bar again, anytime soon?”

He raises a brow. “I don’t know.. Mina’s got head in knots that I was out last night anyways.”

“Well… I’ll be there if you choose to. I’d love to see you again.”

“Go home to your girl,” he whispers, and she smiles, raising the box a bit before dropping it and going to the colored check out section. Jack exhales as she goes, and oh how easy it would be to fall in love with a woman like that. 

**Author's Note:**

> IF YOU MADE THIS FAR THAT MEANS YOU READ THE WHOLE THING!!  
> congratulations you have officially survived the mess that was that chapter  
> leave a comment with your thoughts! Tell me what you think! thank you guys


End file.
